After years of bickering over whom will foot the bill for it, the Holy Grail of digital cinema seems to be coming closer to reality. The major studios and the big exhibition chains know that they’ll both reap economic benefits from digital distribution, so the new paradigm is that, in one way or another, they’re both going to finance it.

Yesterday at the trade confab ShowEast, Sony Electronics officially unveiled its 4K digital projector. Though a piece of analog 35mm doesn’t have pixels, it’s generally accepted that 4K of digital resolution is necessary to get all the detail of 35mm and 70mm film on to the screen. Many visual effects are rendered in 4K (though some people maintain that the human eye can’t tell the difference between 3K and 4K).

The Sony 4K projector model SXRD SRX-110 has 10,000 lumens of brightness displaying 4096×2160 pixels. Sony’s 5,000 – and 10,000-lumen 4K projectors will go into production next month at the rate of 100 units per month, according to a story in today’s Hollywood Reporter.

“As a moviegoer, I would be incredibly impressed with the image quality, which is certainly equal to or better than 35mm film,” says 20th Century Fox exec vp Julian Levin.